The Storm of Their Existence
by ink-sweat-and-tears
Summary: It was once Sherlock's job to save John Watson- but what happens when Sherlock is the one who needs saving? Can he let himself be sheltered from the storm of his own existence?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:**

Hello lovely readers! This is my first ever fanfic- so please please review/comment!

* * *

 **The Storm of Their Existence**

Sherlock traced his fingers down the glass of the window, watching as a transparent trail appeared through the fog of his breath. He wished he could clear the haze in his mind just as easily, wipe away the mist that was gathering in the normally-crystalline halls of his brain.

But he'd had no luck breaking free of the icy fog. Ever since he'd returned to 221b after the nightmare orchestrated by his sister, he'd felt himself mired in its frigid whiteness. It scorched the inside of his lungs with a burning cold, singing the edges of his thoughts with frostbite. His deductions came too slowly, the smooth planes of logic riddled with holes eaten away by something he couldn't understand: something that fled when he tried to analyze its disturbing presence.

Sherlock turned from the window, spinning on his heel to avoid the thoughts that materialized through the veil in his mind. Realizing a bit late that his motion had been too sudden, he swayed on his feet for a minute before clutching at a curtain to steady himself. He hadn't slept in 4 days. As much as he hated to admit it, his transport was failing him.

Gritting his teeth, Sherlock swept across the flat and into the kitchen, where the remains of an experiment lay scattered across the counter. He frowned at the array of petri dishes that had failed to distract him from the phenomenon consuming his brain, and indeed, his body- for the icy fog did not limit itself to Sherlock's mind.

It was worse at night. The haze would spread itself through Sherlock's limbs, raising a clammy sweat on his alabaster skin and turning his stomach to a fathomless pit. Beneath paper-thin lids his eyes would dance, twitching in time with the race of his heart. Sherlock did not like feeling as though he were at the mercy of his physical vessel. He was used to being obeyed, his body a finely tuned instrument ready to dip and turn to the symphony in his mind. Now it seemed to lurch to its own tune- his bones jerked to the music of fear.

A crash startled Sherlock from the fog, and he stared down at the teacup that lay in pieces on the floor. It took him too long to notice the line of scarlet blossoming across his palm, too long to look back to the fragments of porcelain at his feet and find the answering streak of red along one jagged edge. He swayed again as he watched the blood pool across his palm, crimson on the whiteness of flesh, just like—

 _Fire, sirens, noise, fear clamored at Sherlock's senses, his hands shaking as adrenaline ripped through his veins. He watched as his fingers tore through the wall of branches and flames, seizing a gasoline-soaked sleeve and wrenching it towards him. He tumbled backwards. Something came with him, dragged from the bonfire to rest unmoving on the damp grass. Sherlock righted himself, scrambling towards the figure lying prone beside him. His hands flew to the streak of blood on the unconscious face he knew so well, his eyes darting, watching for the rise and fall of breath as his own chest refused to still, and suddenly a voice reached his ears. Through the smoke Sherlock heard himself scream, it was a name, it was—_

"JOHN!"

Sherlock jerked upright on the kitchen floor, shards of glass tumbling from his unruly hair to glitter mockingly in the blue fabric of his dressing gown. He pulled himself to his feet, glad there was no one in the flat to witness his unusual lack of grace. He straightened his shoulders, facing his reflection in the microwave and watching as his features assembled themselves into their habitual serenity. His heart, however, refused to bow to his will. It clattered like a trapped bird beneath his ribcage, wings beating at the pale walls of their prison.

With a wordless exclamation Sherlock swept another petri dish from the counter, sending it crashing to the floor. He slammed his fists against the kitchen table, ignoring the clatter of utensils that leapt to join the ruined glassware. A chair took flight at his touch, alighting with a crash in the sitting room. He followed it, vaulting across the coffee table to stand, panting, on the carpet.

 _Control yourself, Sherlock._

The voice seemed to come from everywhere, it seeped from beneath the wallpaper, it echoed from the leering skull on the mantle, it rattled in his brain.

 _Sherlock Holmes does not lose control. Get yourself in order, you pathetic—_

Sherlock seized his violin from its precarious resting place by the window and whipped his bow through the air. It fell across the strings with a screech, a single wail that turned into a screaming cascade of notes. They fell from his instrument, filling his ears with the discordant shadow of a waltz he had once written. The cacophony morphed into a reflection of the chaos in Sherlock's head, swirling wildly like a torrent of—

 _Water, rushing water, too deep, pouring past him into the darkness. The clatter of chains, bones, a frigid cascade surging into the hole before him. A pair of eyes, staring back at him from the blackness, deep blue eyes, frantic, calling out to him-_

"Sherlock!"

A woman's voice, startled- Mrs. Hudson.

Sherlock jerked his face towards the sound, dropping the violin with a clatter.

"You're bleeding, Sherlock, whatever have you—"

"Out!"

Sherlock's voice rang out as he lunged forward to slam the door in the landlady's face. His limbs seemed to move too slowly, dragging through the pale mist that wafted towards him. The whiteness burned like ice on his bare skin.

Someone screamed, through the fog, someone who hovered before him, frozen in a spray of scarlet. A pale face stared at Sherlock through the suffocating mist and he reached out, his fingers ghostly in the haze. His skin blistered, turning red with the cold to match the blood streaming down the figure in front of him. Red, white, flesh, blood, and Sherlock was freezing. He was freezing, falling, tumbling forwards. His searing hands tangled themselves in his black curls, as though they could lift away the bones of his skull. As though they could rip out the faulty neurons that would not stop firing, the errant cells that continued to burn into his mind the image of—

 _John. John, bleeding, leering before him in the sitting room. John, opening his mouth, John, speaking to him in a whisper-_

" _You made a vow."_

Sherlock covered his ears.

" _You made a vow, Sherlock. You said you would protect her."_

He curled into a ball, trembling in the pool of warm blood that seeped towards him.

" _You couldn't protect her, Sherlock- and you couldn't protect me."_

Sherlock looked up, raising his head to stare into the eyes he had memorized within minutes of first seeing them.

But these were not the eyes of John Watson. In their place was only—

Blackness.

* * *

"Sherlock?"

John's voice was steady, his hands unflinching even as his heart stuttered through some sort of bizarre Morse code in his chest.

"Sherlock, wake up!"

The detective's mercurial eyes remained out of sight, and John reached for the man's wrist to search for a pulse.

"How long has he been like this, Mrs. Hudson?"

John glanced over at the landlady, who was pacing between the windows. She stopped and looked over at John, her hands fluttering at her sides as she replied,

"Only a minute, maybe, I was about to call you but I wasn't sure you were home from hospital—"

She broke off, turning her back to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"Mrs. Hudson, I need to know. Did you find him passed out like this? If he's been out for—"

He was cut off by the sound of a car door slamming below.

"Oh, that'll be Mycroft, oh dear—"

Mrs. Hudson raced to the window, rather too quickly for an old woman wearing heals, in John's opinion. He turned back to Sherlock's limp form, only to whip his head around when the implications of Mycroft's arrival exploded with agonizing brightness in his brain.

"You called Mycroft, you called _Mycroft_ before me, Mrs. Hudson?"

John was standing now, his fists clenched, shoulders drawing back into military alignment. How could she think that—

"Oh, no dear, I didn't call him. You know Mycroft, he just—"

The door to the flat swung open, and the tall form of Sherlock's brother stepped into the room. He leaned rather heavily on his umbrella, but this was the only break in his normally perfect facade. Mycroft looked as calm as ever, as unmoved as he had been when he stood beneath the barrel of Sherlock's gun—

John shook his head to clear the image and turned to face the ginger-haired man.

"You," he said flatly, his voice once again refusing to follow the path of his wildly oscillating heart. "You knew this was coming? You knew he was going to—"

John was cut off, again, as Mycroft straightened up to glance at the shorter doctor. "Of course I didn't _know_ this was going to happen, or I would have had him in hospital ages ago."

The man's trim accent grated at John's ears, entirely too calm despite his apparent sprint up the stairs from below. He wanted to shake Mycroft, how could he act so nonchalant when his brother was lying unconscious with blood dripping from his fingers?

Mycroft seemed unphased by John's steely tone and continued his explanation.

"But if you think I wasn't watching my brother _very closely_ after—"

This time he stopped short of his own accord.

"Well, after—"

John nodded, sparing him the rest of the sentence.

"I've been here only a minute or two, they'd just released me" he said, "but since I arrived he hasn't moved. Hasn't opened his eyes. I can't tell if he's hit his head, or if he's injured, or—"

"John?"

The voice was so faint, so quiet, that John thought he'd imagined it. But he threw himself to the floor next to Sherlock, searching the man's face for a sign that he had indeed uttered the single word.

"John."

Sherlock spoke again, louder this time, but his eyes remained closed. He sounded terrified, like the child John knew he had discovered in himself at Musgrave. His eyes jerked back and forth beneath their lids as though searching for something in the darkness he found there.

"Sherlock, I'm here. Please, are you—"

The detective's eyes flew open at the sound of John's voice, his gaze darting wildly across the doctor's face.

"Sherlock! Are you okay?"

John brought his hand to Sherlock's temple, feeling for a lump or a cut, but the man jerked away with a violence that sent John reeling backwards.

"No!"

Sherlock's cried out, shielding his eyes as he rolled away from John.

"No, no, I can't save you, I can't—"

"SHERLOCK!"

John grabbed the man's shoulders, almost recoiling at the sharp edges of bone that protruded beneath his dressing gown.

"Sherlock, please- _please,_ have you hurt yourself? What's wrong?"

At this, Sherlock froze. His body went rigid but his face- his face struck John an almost physical blow. It was the same expression he had worn in the pool, years before, as he'd ripped the vest of Semtex from John's chest. It was the expression he'd worn when he pulled John from the bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night, the look of desperate terror John had seen staring down at him from the edge of a well only days before.

Sherlock's lips parted. He lifted a trembling hand to John's face, trailing two fingers down his cheek as though brushing away a smudge he had seen there. The detective looked at his shaking fingers, covered in blood, and then shifted his eyes back to meet John's gaze.

"No, John. I didn't hurt myself."

He looked down at his fingers, and then back at the smear of blood he had left across John's cheek.

"I didn't hurt myself John. I hurt you."

John felt the breath leave his chest. A muffled silence fell over his ears, behind which the exclamations of Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson fell away. He rocked back onto his heels, ignoring the sensation of his fingernails digging into his palms.

 _I should have known._

He closed his eyes and was immediately confronted by the image of Sherlock hovering over him in the hospital room, his face all angles in the eerie glow of the heart monitor.

"John," he had whispered. "John. How do you do it?"

John had blinked his eyes in the darkened room, glancing around for a clock.

"Sherlock, how did you get in here? They said I couldn't have any visitors until—"

Sherlock had turned away in the darkness. "I'm sorry John. It's been three days since, since—"

John had never heard him stutter so over his words. The detective whirled around to face the hospital bed again.

"They wouldn't tell me how you were. Only that you'd nearly drowned. You could have been _dying_ and I couldn't—"

"Sherlock."

John cut in, his voice soft. "Sherlock, please, I'm fine. Lungs feel a little sodden, is all, but—"

He broke off as his attempt at humor drew Sherlock forward in a rush. His hands clenched the iron bars beside John's bed as if they were all that kept him standing.

"I should have gotten to you sooner. I couldn't save you, I never could, and now every time I close my eyes—"

Sherlock stopped talking. He looked down at John, his expression unreadable, cheekbones sharp in the blue glare at his back.

"How do you do it, John? The nightmares? How do you make them go away?"

John had opened his mouth, then, to speak, but no sound came out. Fragments of his own nightmares flickered in front of him, explosions and writhing limbs and red, red blood projected on the blank hospital walls. The nightmares that had plagued him, waking him as soon as he dropped into sleep. The nightmares that had stopped when he moved in with Sherlock, that had not come back since.

"Sherlock, I—"

The hospital door opened, a nurse rushing in to pull Sherlock away.

Only now it was Mrs. Hudson, clasping John's wrist, pulling him away from Sherlock on the floor. John allowed himself to be guided meekly across the room, dropping into his armchair by the fire.

"Now, now, dear, we don't need you collapsing on us, too," Mrs. Hudson twittered as she settled him into his chair. He watched her rush into the kitchen in search of tea, her heals crunching over shattered glass.

John looked back over at Mycroft, who had apparently managed to drag a newly-unconscious Sherlock back onto the sofa and was now eyeing him with a practiced air of neutrality.

"This is my fault," John said, miserably. Mycroft didn't move. "I knew he was having nightmares, I should have told someone, he came to me for help—"

"Dr. Watson."

Mycroft took a step towards him, leaning on his umbrella again. "This is no more your fault than the crash of the Chinese stock markets is mine."

He stopped, raising an eyebrow as he apparently reconsidered this comparison, but John cut him off before he could make an amendment.

"Mycroft, I _could_ have helped him. He came to me, asking how to deal with the nightmares, and—"

Now it was Mycroft's turn to cut him off.

"Dr. Watson, you were in hospital. There was nothing you could do."

He took another step closer, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Sherlock had not moved on the sofa.

"This is an unfortunate incident, but you are _not_ responsible."

John looked at his lap, lifting a hand to touch the streak of blood across his cheek. What had Sherlock seen there? Had he imagined it was John's own blood on the expanse of his brow? Did he blame himself for everything that had happened at his sister's hands?

 _He would,_ thought John, _he would blame himself. He likes to believe he can control everything… thinking he could protect Mary, thinking he could protect_ me…

Mycroft spoke again, interrupting his thoughts.

"If you had had the chance to answer him, Dr. Watson, what would you have said?"

John stood up from his armchair, ignoring the noise of disapproval that sounded from the direction of the kitchen. He looked up at Mycroft, and then down at the man's brother, sprawled on the couch in a tangle of slender limbs and blue silk and midnight hair.

John crossed the room in a few steps, and Mycroft moved aside so he could kneel next to the sofa. He sat there, for a minute, watching the rise and fall of Sherlock's chest. His ribs, too sharp, pressed against the fabric of his dressing gown, as they had when John first met the detective. He had been far too skinny, then. Wild, erratic, determined not to let anything control him.

And John, John had been wild in his own way. Fleeing from his nightmares, but running only towards the bottom of a glass and the barrel of a gun. Then they had run into each other, Sherlock and John, colliding in a whirlwind of chaos that somehow settled into a sort of peace. They sheltered each other from the storm of their own existence, building a quiet stronghold even as they ran together through bullets and fire.

John looked back up at Mycroft, at the pale blue eyes that were so similar to Sherlock's and yet lacking something of his brother's ethereal beauty.

"Well?" said the taller man, tapping his umbrella against the floor. "What would you have said to my dear brother, if you'd had the chance?"

John felt certain that Mycroft was repressing a smile, but whether it was a smile of mockery or something kinder he couldn't tell. So he addressed his words, instead, to Sherlock.

"I would have told him," John said, "that I didn't do anything to stop the nightmares."

He took a step closer to Sherlock's prone form, stretched out in so much fragility on the couch.

"I would have told him that _he_ stopped the nightmares- he saved me from myself."

John flinched at his own words, realizing he sounded like one of the sappy novels Mary had used to read.

Mycroft studied the doctor's face, and John let himself be examined by the man's passionless gaze.

"Do you remember, doctor," Mycroft began slowly, "Do you remember the words of a certain woman, as they pertained to the saving of one John Watson?"

John attempted to glare at Mycroft, but his face seemed unable to move. He opened his mouth to tell Mycroft to go do something rather unsavory, but instead the man spoke again.

"If I remember correctly, someone once said that John Watson would never allow himself to be saved. That it was only in rescuing someone else that he could be—"

John stood up abruptly, fingers twitching against an imaginary trigger. Mycroft tilted his head to one side, giving a nod that might have passed for an apology before continuing.

"My brother likes to think he doesn't need saving. He likes to think that saving others is his duty, if you will."

Mycroft looked down at his brother, still motionless, his red-stained hands trailing on the ground.

"He holds himself to a rather high standard in that regard, I'm afraid."

Now Mycroft looked back up at John, straightening his back and tipping his umbrella to one side.

"I think perhaps he could use some reassurance that his perceived failure in saving _you_ , my dear doctor, is not such a failure after all."

With this, Mycroft gave a little bow and turned smartly in his polished black shoes. He nodded at Mrs. Hudson, who was hovering at the edge of the kitchen like a mother bird watching her children learn to fly. And then he was gone, disappearing down the steps towards the street below.

Mrs. Hudson stepped forward. "He's such a dramatic, that one," she started, "But—"

She took another step towards John, wringing her hands. "But you know he's right?"

John didn't answer. He felt something hollow open up beneath his ribcage, something sharp and empty all at once.

"He thinks he failed," he said, softly, not looking up at Mrs. Hudson where she stood. "He doesn't understand how many times he's saved me, it's not enough, he's—"

The landlady crossed her arms and John stopped. "You silly goose, of _course_ he'd think that if you never told him otherwise!"

John stared at Mrs. Hudson, who broke into incredulous laughter. "You two are just like children, you are always scared to be the first to speak, always afraid to show something that makes you a little vulnerable."

She stopped again to put a hand on John's shoulder. "God forbid either of you admit how desperately you need each other, you're a pair of—"

She stopped as she saw the hopeless expression that had spread itself across John's face.

"I find it difficult- I find it difficult, this stuff, you know," he found himself saying, trying to hold down the memories of the last time he had uttered those words.

Mrs. Hudson seemed unmoved.

"Well if you can't _tell_ him, you'll just have to—"

"Tell me what?"

Mrs. Hudson was interrupted by a voice from behind John. The latter spun around, nearly toppling over when he registered the sight of Sherlock's silver eyes wide open and fixed on his own.

"Tell me what?" he repeated, weakly, the frantic child gone now from his voice.

John coughed, glancing back over towards Mrs. Hudson, but the woman was gone.

"God damn it, that—"

He coughed again and looked back at Sherlock. The man's eyes hadn't moved, their earlier terror replaced now with a sadness that reopened the empty wound in John's chest.

"John, are you leaving?"

Sherlock looked away and John felt himself folding inward with the weight of Sherlock's guilt and sadness.

"I should have done better."

John could have shaken him, then and there, if he hadn't looked so utterly vulnerable. The man's dark curls hung across his bloodied brow, red and white and black and silver blending into a face that sent a knife plunging into John's gut. He struggled against the impulse to collapse inward on himself, and instead he reached out a hand towards the man who had stopped him from doing exactly that all these years.

"Sherlock—" he paused, searching for something to say that wouldn't send the detective curling back into his protective shell. Unable to find something, he continued, "Sherlock, you've never been so wrong in your life. You have no idea how many times you—"

"No John," the detective interrupted, drawing himself upright on the couch. As he did John saw a flicker of indignation, a hint of the Sherlock that wanted to prove people wrong when they doubted the logic of his deductions. But then it was gone, replaced by the heaviness of defeat.

"No. I'm sorry, John. I made a vow, a vow to protect Mary and—" his voice caught, but he continued, "and you. But I can't do it. The closer I get to you, the more you get hurt, and the more you get hurt, the more I —"

This time Sherlock seemed unable to rescue his voice from whatever had trapped it in his throat. John reached out a hand, slowly, as though he were coaxing a wounded animal towards assistance. He waited, pausing, before resting his fingers across Sherlock's upturned palm. The blood there had dried, and John made a show of examining the gash that streaked across the expanse of pale flesh. He forced himself not to speak, to let Sherlock continue when he was ready.

Eventually the detective spoke again, whispering now. "The more you get hurt, the more afraid—" his voice shook, but he pressed on- "the more afraid I become."

He lifted his eyes towards John's face, but stopped halfway, settling his gaze on the doctor's hand where it lay across his own.

"You have to understand John. Fear- I've always been able to control it before. But I can't, not anymore. I've let it get under my skin, it's freezing me from the inside out and I can't close my eyes without seeing you—"

John had moved before Sherlock could finish the word, placing his fingers gently across Sherlock's lips.

"Shh," he whispered, and Sherlock trembled at his touch. He resembled a frightened animal even more than he had moments ago, and John cursed himself for moving too soon. He pulled back, quickly, but Sherlock's hand shot up to catch his own.

It was John's turn to be startled, now, but he did not move as he felt his palm drawn back to Sherlock's lips. They were moving, ghosting against John's skin and he had to lean forward to hear Sherlock say,

"I can't protect you when you're so close, John- the fear, it controls me. But I can't protect you if I let you go… I fail no matter what I do."

John's heart was pounding. He wondered if Sherlock could feel his pulse, coursing where skin met skin between them. He remembered another time Sherlock had taken someone's pulse, years ago, in this same room. A woman- The Woman. John looked at the floor. Were his eyes dilated, as hers had been? What would Sherlock say, if he saw?

But the detective did not comment on John's eyes, nor did he mention the doctor's pulse. Instead he let go of John's hand, letting it fall reluctantly into the space between them.

"I only put you in danger, John- all the danger you survived in the war, and now you're getting shot at, captured, tortured because of _me._ It was my job to save you, John Watson, but instead I dragged you into _my_ war. I can count every time you've almost died for me, every time—"

John raised his hand again, placing his fingers on Sherlock's chin and drawing the detective's face up to meet his gaze.

"Listen to me, Sherlock."

His voice was quiet- he barely dared to breath into the space between them lest Sherlock pull away. But he didn't; his eyes remained fixed on John's, circles of shifting color at the edge of two deep black pools.

"Sherlock, if you hadn't taken me into _your_ war, if you weren't _almost_ getting me killed, I'd be doing it much more permanently myself."

Sherlock didn't look away, but if anything, his eyes grew wider.

"You saved me- not from the world, Sherlock, from myself."

This time John didn't twitch at the words. They no longer felt strange on his tongue, and they seemed to shimmer in the air that separated him from Sherlock.

"You asked about my nightmares- well, I never found a way to make them go away."

John was sure Sherlock had stopped breathing, and he hurried on, desperate to finish voicing his thoughts if the man was going to pass out again. He didn't think he would be able to repeat this conversation, short of bringing it up on his deathbed.

" _You_ made the nightmares go away, Sherlock, just by being here. By reminding me that life is not about what could have happened or the things we could have stopped. It's about _now,_ about the places and things and people we love—"

John stopped as Sherlock swayed backwards, and he lunged forward to catch the detective's wrists. Holding Sherlock upright, he cursed himself for the second time. So much for finding it difficult, this sort of thing- since when had he gone from saying too little, to saying too much?

Sherlock's eyes were darting from his wrists to John's face, up and down almost too quickly for John to follow. Suddenly they stopped, coming to rest on the smear of blood he had left on John's cheek. Something moved behind his gaze, and John scrambled for words, anything to distract Sherlock from what had triggered his panic minutes before.

"Sherlock, you _did_ save me, and now it's my turn to save _you._ But—"

He stopped, letting his fingers uncurl from Sherlock's wrists to spread against the man's own splayed-open hands.

"But, what?" whispered Sherlock, his breath suddenly coming much too quickly for John's comfort. He hurried on.

"But you have to _let_ me save you Sherlock. You have to stop thinking about what could have been, and live for the people you love now. Mycroft, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson—"

"You."

Sherlock's word seemed to vibrate against his palms, traveling through John's bones to curl in the emptiness inhabiting his chest. It rested there, warm and delicate. John held his breath, willing the tiny word not to be swallowed up by the blackness beneath his ribs. But it was futile, for the fragile sensation fled as Sherlock's voice sounded again.

"You, John. I love _you._ "

And suddenly the emptiness inside John was gone, filled not by a single word but by the sensation of Sherlock's lips on his own. He was no longer folding in on himself, he was expanding, a rush of euphoria radiating outward from his core. He was sure he would incinerate Sherlock with the intensity of his bliss but the detective only drew him closer, as if John were burning away something cold inside him. They melted together, there was nothing holding them up but each other, they were—

Falling, tumbling to the floor in a heap as the door flew open with a bang. They scrambled away from each other as Lestrade burst into the room, glancing around wildly before he spotted Sherlock lying crumpled by the sofa with John draped over him.

"My god, John, is he okay?"

The detective inspector reached for his phone, voice rising an octave as he raced towards the two figures on the floor.

"Should I call an ambulance? Does he need—"

"Lestrade!"

Suddenly Mrs. Hudson burst into the room behind the frantic policeman, her face consumed by a flaming blush.

"Detective Inspector, I'm so sorry, I tried to catch you on the stairs but this hip, you know…"

Her voice trailed off as she glanced at Sherlock and John apologetically. John looked down and realized his hands were still entwined in Sherlock's and he pulled away so quickly he almost knocked over the coffee table.

"Lestrade," he said gruffly, "He's- _we're_ \- fine, Sherlock's just had—"

He couldn't bring himself to meet the DI's gaze, but luckily Mrs. Hudson interjected.

"Why don't you come down for a cuppa, Detective Inspector, I've just put the kettle on, please—"

Lestrade looked at Mrs. Hudson and then back at Sherlock and John. He allowed himself to be dragged through the still-open doorway and down the stairs. But John could have sworn that as the man disappeared on the steps behind the landlady, he'd turned to look at the boys one last time- and winked.

John looked back at Sherlock. His eyes were closed, and for one awful second John thought he had retreated, drawn back into himself. He opened his mouth at the same time Sherlock opened his eyes, and then there was no need for John to speak- for Sherlock's eyes said everything. All the words, the stories that had been written between them lay gathered in the detective's luminous gaze. And so, instead of saying the unspoken, Sherlock looked up at John and asked,

"Oh, her _face!_ Did you see, John, did you—"

John stood there for a moment, staring at the man who had been so broken moments before yet who now looked so immersed in peace. And then Sherlock let out a deep chuckle, and John fell against him, heaving with laughter of his own. They stayed there, side by side, giggling like children. And John was reminded of a time when they had laughed together years ago, leaning against the wall in the hallway below. He reached for Sherlock's hand, and they lay together, there on the sitting room carpet.

John had never felt less empty in his life.

And as they drifted to sleep, not moving from their embrace on the floor, Sherlock had never felt less cold.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:**

Hello everyone! I've decided to continue this story- couldn't let Sherlock and John off the hook that easily! Nothing is ever simple with those two, is it. So here's the "not simple" part. Please tell me what you think so I can make things better!

* * *

Sherlock was pondering the uses of spiderwebs in concealing criminal evidence when John asked the question. It wasn't the one he was supposed to ask.

The detective was draped over his armchair, legs askew and head thrown back, looking for all intents and purposes like he had fallen from the ceiling and crashed into his current disheveled position. He was perusing his mind palace for some information on the spider _Nephila inaurata_ when John's voice interrupted him.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock waited; he knew what was coming. He'd heard the words echoing in the back of his head for three days, playing on an endless loop until they became distorted and blended together into something that no longer resembled human speech.

 _You kissed me._

Sherlock had been locked for the past 36 hours in a perpetual brace for impact, preparing himself for the inevitable collision. John would confront him, and he would have nothing to say, for once in his life, nothing to defend himself with, and John would leave him and he would—

"How did you know about Mary?"

Sherlock twitched one eye open, which, considering his ability to hold himself indefinitely motionless, amounted to a full-on faint. _Such a silly evolutionary response,_ he thought, as the warped record in his brain came to a screeching halt . For one infinitesimal moment he considered allowing himself to believe in miracles- to believe that John was not going to leave him to drown in his own mind.

Then he realized how ridiculous this notion was. He had been wrong all along- he had miscalculated, thinking he understood John enough to predict the man's behavior without fault. And perhaps once he had. But that was the _real_ John that he'd known. This was different. John's response to their- _contact-_ proved that things were far, far worse than he had thought.

Sherlock attempted to navigate the flood of dread that was suddenly unleashed in the vicinity of his navel. He succeeded, as usual, without moving a millimeter, and it took his brain only a second to find something suitably nonchalant to say to John. He forced his lips to work over the roar of his body rejecting its imminent separation from the only thing stitching it into the fabric of existence.

"I know a great many things that you do not, John. About Mary, about the world in general. You'll have to be more specific."

John let the newspaper droop, peering at Sherlock over a headline declaring that half of Andre Street had been leveled in an explosion. Through one silver eye, Sherlock watched the thoughts flicker behind the darker blue of John's irises. Frustration, confusion, resignation- affection? The emotions spun themselves out across the doctor's face, so unlike the brittle mask of serenity Sherlock was holding together with 93.6% of his willpower. The remaining percentage was engaged in recalling an expression he had heard once, while lurking under-cover in a coffee shop.

"He wears his heart on his sleeve, that one," an old woman was saying, stirring her coffee primly. Sherlock had wrinkled his nose at the phrase. It made no sense, just another example of sentiment bleeding into imprecise idioms. He knew, of course, that the woman meant her acquaintance was far too forthcoming with his emotions. But one's heart had nothing to do with feeling; sentiment was nothing more than the nuanced shift of neurochemicals. Besides, why would one display such whims on the sleeve of one's garment? It would be much more effective to communicate with one's face, as John did so effortlessly.

Sherlock waited for the doctor's thoughts to turn into words, just for the sake of watching the planes of John's face arrange themselves for a few more seconds. He was uncomfortably aware that each one brought him inexorably closer to the last moment he would spend with the man. He'd have to be deleted, soon. This John was too dangerous.

"How did you know," John said, finally, "about the Mary that…"

He broke off for a minute, closing his eyes, and Sherlock drank in the new pattern of lines that appeared around the man's mouth. This was a novel one, this expression. A combination of John's "I don't want to talk about it" and his "I wish I understood you" and something of his "I'm regretting even asking this question." Sherlock filed it away for future reference, trying not to think about that fact that the images in his mind palace would soon be all he had left of John. He couldn't be allowed out again.

"How did you know about the Mary that I… imagined. After."

After _._ Sherlock marveled at the way in which John could make a single word convey so much meaning.

 _ **After**_ _Mary died._ _ **After**_ _you pushed me away and told me you'd rather have anyone but me._ _ **After**_ _I told you that it was okay, and you said that no, it wasn't._ _ **After**_ _I told you it is what it is, and held you so close I was sure you could feel my heart racing too fast—_

Sherlock opened his other eye, blotting out the image in his mind with the visual stimuli of the present. He looked at John, for a minute, letting his thoughts arrange themselves before he spoke. He wished he could communicate inaudibly, broadcast the contents of his mind on radio waves so he wouldn't have to explain himself with the inadequacies of the English language. But no- no, there were things in his mind that he couldn't let John see. Not even this John- he'd just disappear that much sooner.

So Sherlock opened his mouth, instead, and constructed a sentence that carried only a shadow of what he really wanted to say.

"I've seen enough ghosts of my own to know that your eyes were looking at something no one else could see."

John put down his newspaper. His face was speaking again, though his mouth hung open slightly as if he had just caught something small between his lips. Sherlock closed his eyes and still he could feel the incoming signal of John's thoughts, washing over him like electromagnetic radiation. Like the sun's unseen light, the kind that leaves invisible little spots on your skin the longer you spend in its presence, so that one day you look at yourself under an ultraviolet light and discover you are covered in evidence of a star's caress.

Sherlock wondered if one day he would be marked by his proximity to John. If his skin would bear the invisible impressions of John's emotions. Would they become cancerous, these scars? Eat into the fabric of his being and infiltrate his mind with sentimentality? Maybe they'd be joined, one day, by physical marks. The imprint of lips and teeth and fingers and—

"Sherlock, you can't just drop things like that. People don't..."

John stopped, letting out a barely-audible sigh. His voice sounded tired, it dragged at the edges, curling beneath the words that weighed too much. But there was something else beneath the drooping syllables. Worry. Fear. There it was again- the emotion, traveling alongside John's words at a frequency beyond the ear's reach. Instead of vibrating in Sherlock's tympanic membrane, it seemed to resonate somewhere in his chest. As though it really was his heart interpreting the message John broadcast without even trying.

It felt like poison, like the scars he imagined John leaving on his skin. But it was a blissful poison; they were beautiful scars. Sherlock was sure John was corrupting every fiber of his body and mind.

It was a rapturous destruction.

Suddenly aware of John's gaze, still focused intently on his contorted limbs, Sherlock willed his body to still itself. He forced his blood to slow in his veins, his breath to stop leaving his lungs in tiny fluttering gasps.

 _Change the topic- before you tell him exactly, in vivid detail, what ghosts you've seen._

"It's a shame," Sherlock yawned, standing in one fluid movement and gesturing at the headline draped across John's lap.

"There was about to be an especially marvelous murder on Andre Street."

* * *

John watched Sherlock pad away towards the kitchen, not bothering to comment on the morbid expression that had just fallen like a pleasantry from the man's mouth. He rather suspected it had been an attempt to elicit some sort of reaction, and he was determined not to provide the distraction such a response would provoke. It didn't come as a surprise that Sherlock hadn't enlightened him on the matter of his personal ghosts. Frankly, he hadn't even been expecting the detective to answer his first question. Perhaps he was feeling generous today.

Or perhaps he was regretting the events of three days before, his momentary lapse into sentiment: the press of his lips against John's. Maybe he was retreating into himself, trying to prepare the doctor for the moment when he'd be asked to leave, told it had all been a mistake and directed to forget he'd even met Sherlock Homes.

The clink of glassware drifted from the direction of the kitchen and John abandoned the newspaper, placing it warily on the side table. He tried to leave his dread there, too, beneath the folds of the paper, but it didn't work. So he looked away, straightening his legs and glancing at the flecks of dust adorning his shoes. He wondered what Sherlock had read in the pattern of soil and concrete that was incomprehensible to his own eyes. Sherlock was always reading things, sensing things, knowing things as if the universe broadcast the answer to its mysteries on a wavelength normal people were not equipped to receive. Sometimes John had the feeling Sherlock was reading him, too. Tuning in to a secret transmission he wasn't aware he had authorized his body to give.

Brushing the dust from his shoes and the thought from his mind, John stood to join Sherlock in the kitchen. If the man wanted to pretend their conversation had never happened, then so be it. John busied himself clearing away the various scalpels and other glistening instruments from the kitchen table, holding himself carefully away from Sherlock's whirling limbs. He did not let himself to wonder how the man managed to make tea with the precision of a dancer. He did not allow his mind to dwell on the miraculous way Sherlock's suit still hung unwrinkled from his lean frame, despite the impossible contortions it had just endured. And he especially did not permit himself to admire the shadows that raced, sharp and fleeting, across Sherlock's cheeks.

"When you're quite finished staring at me like an idiot, you can fetch me the milk."

Sherlock's voice sent John falling into the chair behind him with a thump. This was a problem. Since when did Sherlock casually remark on the occurrence of being ogled by his flatmate? Since when did said flatmate find it acceptable to ogle Sherlock in the first place?

 _Since_ _always_ , said the voice in John's head- the one that sounded distinctly like Mary. Sherlock glanced at him sharply.

"Did you know she wasn't real?" the detective asked, his voice reminiscent of someone inquiring about the weather.

John was sure that he would have ended up on the floor if he hadn't already been sitting. He felt violently nauseous, all of a sudden- as though he were being jerked about on the roller coaster of Sherlock's thoughts. Unable to formulate either a protest or a comment on the uncanny nature of the man's apparent telepathy, he instead forced himself to stand and walk towards the fridge. He held tightly to the edge of the kitchen table as he swung open the metal door, ignoring the new pattern of dents adorning its surface.

"Yes."

John wasn't sure he had given his lips permission to form the damning word. Then again, Sherlock seemed to make John's body do all sorts of things he hadn't given it permission to do. Squaring his shoulders forcefully, he grabbed the carton of milk with his free hand and turned to face the detective.

"You can't just end a conversation and then start it up again whenever it suits you," he said, slowly, pretending that he was imagining the annoyance seeping into his own voice. He had asked Sherlock about Mary to distract him- to reassure the detective that he was not alone in being haunted by nightmares and specters. And now Sherlock had managed to make John the subject of another interrogation completely.

Sherlock ignored the doctor's protests. "How did you know?" he asked, sounding for all the world like he was contemplating the likelihood of rain and not discussing John's ability to identify hallucinations of his dead wife.

John realized it was pointless to resist; evasion was not a tactic that worked with Sherlock. He would press on, delving towards the answer he sought like a heat-seeking missile. He had hunted down John's birth certificate just to discover the man's middle name- if he wanted to know something, he would find a way to make John tell him. Better to be up front with him and avoid the collateral damage.

"She told me."

John attempted to keep his voice as even and passive as Sherlock's, but he had the distinct impression that he wasn't doing a very good job. The detective was silent, for a moment, hands splayed on the counter as he stared down into his over-brewed cup of tea. John moved to place the milk beside him, stepping over a discarded pair of plyers on the floor. But as he glanced down to avoid the ominously-stained tool, Sherlock's hand shot out and wrapped itself around John's wrist.

John had jumped out of an airplane, once, in Afghanistan. Briefly, while his brain still retained some of its normal function, he reflected that the sensation of Sherlock's hand on his wrist was rather similar to parachuting from a moving aircraft. There was the identical way his stomach dropped, the feeling of wind rushing past his face, the exhilaration of free-fall consuming him. He let himself be consumed.

When John regained awareness of his feet on solid ground, he realized Sherlock was looking at him intently, eyes narrowed in that delicate way he sometimes looked at an especially puzzling dead body. Only there was something different about his gaze, about the way his slender fingers had locked around John's wrist. It was like he was holding onto something incredibly fragile, something that might evaporate if he let go.

" _You_ didn't tell me, John."

Sherlock's voice no longer belonged on the weather channel.

" _You_ didn't tell me you weren't real."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:**

Sorry it took so long to get this chapter out… thanks for everyone who's sticking with this story, especially my wonderful beta reader (you know who you are!)

* * *

Sherlock calculated that he had exactly nine minutes before Lestrade showed up to coax him down from the roof of Bart's.

He was surprised, actually, that his brain had enough tracks to run this calculation alongside the 27 other locomotives barreling through his skull. They raced along iron rails of logic, each with its own separate engine of deductions spewing forth a whirlwind of steam.

Sherlock had once counted 23 simultaneous trains of thought, during a particularly frustrating case involving an arsonist, a movie theater, and a stray cat. But 27 was a new record, and he was feeling rather proud of himself until the train devoted to observing his immediate surroundings fell off the tracks.

Luckily the concrete barrier at the edge of the roof jammed into his knees before he went tumbling into space. Some part of his brain attempted to make an ironic comment about this incident, but he threw himself on the brakes of that thought and turned his attention back to the critical question: _where had the_ real _John Watson gone?_

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, attempting to still his frenetic neurons. He hated the days when his mind became a railway junction- it was unbearably noisy. He much preferred the days when his thoughts arranged themselves into a symphony. Instead of trains, there were instruments, each one an observation with its own unique sound. On symphony days Sherlock listened to all the instruments and arranged them into music only he could hear. Those were good days, case-solving days.

But the best days were the light ones: the rare hours when his mind was a hall of mirrors filled with a thousand luminescent rays. Every detail Sherlock absorbed took on its own vibrant color, bending and refracting until the myriad hues coalesced into a brilliant white solution. Those were the days when John was close at his side- his conductor of light, his prism.

But John was gone now, and Sherlock was being ripped apart by 26 trains hurtling in 26 different directions.

 _Where is the_ real _John Watson?_

The question hissed, over and over, as Sherlock looked down at the pattern of cracks beneath his feet. He had memorized the exact path of each fissure in the concrete four years ago: the first time he stood on this rooftop; the first time he'd seen the _other_ John.

There had been a moment, standing there on the edge with his arms aloft, when his world had split in two. Not the kind of split that fractured his consciousness into trains or music or colors- the kind of cataclysmic fissure that wrenched apart mind and matter, and made it difficult to tell which was which.

Sherlock had always been able to trust himself, body and brain, until that moment. Sure, there had been miscalculations. There were times his body had given in to the baser instincts of pleasure or pain. But even those had been failures of a logical nature. Sherlock had never before been confronted with evidence of his absolute, complete descent into an irrational realm.

For that is what he had been- irrational, insane- when he stepped forward to the edge of the roof and realized that there was _another John Watson_ standing at his side. There was no time to react, no time to analyze. Sherlock needed to jump, _now,_ or the real John Watson down on the pavement would be dead. So Sherlock jumped- and the John Watson next to him smiled a reassuring smile and jumped right along at his side.

Sherlock fell, four years ago, with his hair whipping in his eyes and his coat spread wide like wings. But he didn't fall alone, and as the sidewalk raced up to meet him, he thought how nice it would be to have this mind-John with him while the matter-John below learned to believe him dead.

Sherlock blinked, letting the cracked concrete blur and refocus. The pattern of radiating lines reminded him of John's scar, a halo of pale streaks spreading outward on the flesh of the doctor's shoulder.

Then he remembered that he had no idea what John's scar actually looked like. It had been the _other_ John, the mind-John, who had pulled aside his jumper one night to let Sherlock trace the spiraling lines with his delicate fingers. Not the real John, the one made of matter and molecules- Sherlock wasn't allowed to touch that John. That was how he'd known, during his two years unraveling Moriarty's tapestry of destruction, that the man at his side was only his imagination. He could touch this John: trace his scar, his collarbones, the curve of his neck, feel his pulse and breath in the scent of him, all cinnamon and tea and just a hint of gun-smoke.

But the matter-John was off limits.

And that meant Sherlock had gone horribly wrong, somewhere in the last few days. The last few months, maybe. At some point he had replaced the real John with the one in his mind, the one who had kept him company during his years of dark places and dark thoughts. Because he had kissed John, the one he'd thought was real, three days ago- yet there had been no consequences. There had been no silent explosion, no forced smiles or "goodbye Sherlock," and the real John would never have let that happen.

Thus Sherlock was forced to conclude that the John who reacted so calmly to this transgression was a fabrication. Now the trouble was finding out exactly when this had happened, and where the real John had gone.

Sherlock rubbed his eyes, taking a step away from the edge of the roof. Three minutes, 180 precious seconds left before someone arrived to berate him for his recklessness. He knew Lestrade had set up cameras on the rooftop after he'd returned. In all likelihood Mycroft had been a part of the operation as well, and would arrive along with half of Scotland Yard to ask for a list.

But there was no list today. Sherlock's hallucinations— _yes, hallucinations_ — he reminded himself, were not the result of drugs. They were his own mind betraying him, giving in to the same chemical defect that had caused him to create a phantom John to follow him faithfully through Eastern Europe.

That was the biggest problem: the one that worried Sherlock the most. The specter that had kept him company in the underbelly of Moriarty's criminal machine had appeared only because of Sherlock's separation from the _real_ John.

From this he deduced that he and John had been separated again- there was no other reason for Sherlock to have brought the mind-John back into existence- but _when_? _When_ had he made the leap from matter to mind, and how had it escaped the notice of his ever-vigilant conscience?

Sherlock screwed up his eyes against the ashen sky and attempted to organize the cacophony of screeching wheels in his brain. _Think_. When had he last seen the real John?

 _Had he been hurt- killed? In Sherrinford, or at Musgrave?_

Sherlock brushed aside a quiver of dread. _No, there would have been evidence. A plan for Rosie, a funeral, something— even_ my _brain couldn't concoct such a foolproof self-deception._

Suddenly it occurred to the detective that his brain had once done exactly this. After all, he had completely deleted (or rather, rewritten) the fact that his childhood best friend had been drowned.

Sherlock spun around, whipping his coat behind him in a vicious rejection of the possibility that John was actually dead. He began to pace, willing his mind to precipitate a more coherent explanation.

 _Perhaps John is still in hospital, and I've imagined the events of the last few days?_

He rejected this story as well, refusing to believe that he could have imagined Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson as well, for they had both seen John in the flat three days ago.

The only remaining explanation hurt nearly as much as believing John to be dead, but it was the only non-impossible conclusion.

 _He's left, he packed up and went away when I kissed him._

Sherlock sank to his knees, letting a gust of wind steal the despondent groan from his throat.

 _You've done it now_ , _Sherlock- how could you let sentiment ruin everything with the one person you've ever had sentiment_ for _?_

The wind continued its assault on Sherlock's cheeks, his sharp bones slicing the air into ribbons that wound through his inky curls. He noticed quite suddenly that the dissonance in his mind had fallen silent. Where thoughts had ricocheted only moment before, there now lay a soundless void.

Sherlock closed his eyes, letting his awareness wander into the gaping chasm. He found himself falling, plummeting into an abyss at the center of his being: a crater devoid of sound and light. The sensation of his knees pressed to the concrete seemed very far away, the biting wind a gentle caress on his face, as he let himself be consumed from the inside out. It was calming, this absence of thought. He could not hear John's name ripping through his consciousness like a ragged blade, he could not access the pool of self-hatred that had been gathering in his stomach like molten steel.

It was the first time Sherlock had ever felt at peace.

Folding in on himself, he allowed the emptiness to spread through his veins like anesthesia. The breath left his lungs in a sigh, carrying with it the agony and fear and desperation that had torn through his body at the thought of John's departure. It was easier, this numbness, than than suffering through the internal lacerations of grief. So Sherlock surrendered himself to the void, giving in to the blackness closing in over his head.

He wasn't sure how long he drifted, spiraling downwards like a ship descending to its final resting place on the ocean floor. He wondered if perhaps this featureless cavern had no bottom. Would he sink in emptiness forever? It was a reassuring thought, except—

 _John_.

Somewhere deep inside himself, Sherlock cried out. The blackness was wavering, boiling around him, growing pale with a light that stabbed at his eyes. A fiery glow slashed at his retinas and suddenly he was staring at—

 _John. John, racing after him through the streets of London, cane forgotten on the floor of Angelo's._

 _John, holding Moriarty in a chokehold in a dimly lit pool._

 _John, standing on an empty grave, lips moving in a desperate plea._

Sherlock was certain he was screaming, but no sound reached his ears. He was drowning and burning at the same time, and still the images race before his eyes.

 _John, breaking down in the Tube as a bomb ticked between them._

 _John, asking him to be his best man._

 _John, holding out a hand on the tarmac with eyes that said what his voice could not._

Sherlock felt his limbs move, kicking frantically as he struggled to flee from the anguish blooming in his chest. His lungs were screaming for oxygen, for—

"JOHN!"

Sherlock pitched forward onto the rooftop, wrenching himself from the shadowy depths of his mind. He lay there, panting on the concrete, with his coat spread around him like the black stain that had spread from Moriarty's skull in this very spot.

The image of Moriarty lying with the ghost of laughter on his cruel lips sent Sherlock bolting to his feet.

 _He had it right, all along,_ Sherlock thought, words returning to his brain.

 _Moriarty knew death was the only escape._

Perhaps the consulting criminal had been fleeing from different demons than the ones that snarled at Sherlock now, but the principle was the same. There would be no rest in the world of the living- not with John's absence searing through him like cyanide.

Sherlock's only hope for relief lay over the concrete horizon of Bart's roof, beckoning with the promise of oblivion. Peace lay four stories below in the collision of bone on sidewalk, not window dressing but _real_ blood, _his_ blood on the damp grey stone.

Sherlock stood.

He swayed a moment on his feet, as though his body were trying to resist the destination towards which his mind now raced. Pulled by invisible strings, Sherlock teetered forwards, then back. A gossamer thread, woven from names, tugged him gently away from the edge—

 _Lestrade… Mycroft… Mrs. Hudson…_

But anchored in Sherlock's chest was another thread; no, a rope, thick as the shackles that moored ships in their harbors. It dragged him forwards and he stumbled along in its wake. One step, towards blissful release-

One more step towards the permanent shore of peace.

* * *

John's feet pounded on the staircase, echoing the pounding of blood in his head. He counted the floors as he passed, drawn forward by terror and pushed from behind by hope.

 _Please don't jump._

A door flew open at John's touch and he raced into the grey illumination of the rooftop. His eyes locked instantly on the dark shape balanced a few yards ahead, arms outstretched and coat billowing like a set of deathly wings.

"SHERLOCK!"

John's voice echoed in his skull, and suddenly he was back on the pavement below.

 _Standing alone, cell phone limp in his fingers, watching an identical figure step to the edge of the roof. He was shouting a name, the only name that mattered, frozen in horror and—_

"Sherlock, NO!"

John ripped himself violently from the memory and willed his legs to move, to carry him forward towards a silhouette that flickered in double vision. Sherlock, seen from below, and Sherlock, from behind… only now the detective was turning, slowly, as if movement were a dangerous thing.

And it was, it was dangerous- if he turned much further he would fall—

John met Sherlock's eyes for one infinitesimal moment. Like two errant fragments of the sky above, the detective's gaze burned into John's, holding on with the sheer force of will.

And then Sherlock was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:**

Sorry for the suspense… but never fear, the resolution is almost here! Thanks as always to everyone who's sticking with the story, and my wonderful beta-reader :)

* * *

" _Taking your own life… Interesting expression. Taking it from who?"_

Somebody was talking, shouting really. It was too loud, too bright, too white.

" _Oh, once it's over, it's not you who'll miss it."_

The voice continued, clawing at Sherlock's temple. He tried to twitch away, to cover his ears, but he discovered that he had no body to move.

" _Your own death is something that happens to everybody else."_

Beneath the words, a new sound started up, a horrible ringing that reverberated in the space where Sherlock's head might have been, if he still possessed one.

" _Your life is not your own."_

Sherlock tried to cry out, to tell the voice to stop, and suddenly he realized the words were his. He was standing at the edge of a river, eyes fixed on the swirling water below. A thin iron rail separated him from the emptiness beyond, and he felt himself lean forward over the turbulent grey current.

" _Keep your hands off it!"_

Sherlock's mouth moved, the voice echoed in his skull and he was falling, tumbling towards the water.

" _Your life is not your own… Keep your hands off it!"_

His lips were still moving as the air rushed past, the water surged up to meet him until all at once it was not water but a pair of dark eyes. A maniacal laughter filled his ears and he reached out for something, anything to stop his fall.

The black pupils widened, they were swallowing him whole and then he was plummeting towards a familiar expanse of concrete.

"NO!"

He tried to struggle, he clawed at the air around him and the sidewalk rushed closer still, the laughter was inside him and around him and with all of his disembodied willpower he reached out to grab onto—

"Sherlock!"

The detective opened his eyes and the horrible laughter ceased. It was replaced by silence, a sterile emptiness broken only by a regular beeping noise from somewhere to his left.

Sherlock felt his toes come back into existence, then his feet, his calves, his knees. Awareness spread upwards through his body in a wave of pain and his lungs expanded suddenly, sucking in a breath of faintly-chemical air.

In the same moment that Sherlock felt his fingers rejoin the physical world, his vision cleared and a hospital room materialized around him.

A hospital room in which John Watson was standing over him.

A John Watson whose wrist was encircled by a set of pale, slender fingers.

It took Sherlock 4.89 seconds to realize they were _his_ fingers wrapped around John's wrist.

"Sherlock?"

John's voice seemed to travel through Sherlock's bones, through his metacarpals and carpals and radius and ulna and humorous until his sternum was vibrating with the sound of his own name and—

"John!"

Sherlock jerked away from the apparition, the ghost hovering over him. He reeled backwards, ignoring the sharp tug of needles and tubes that objected to his movement. Scrambling over the edge of the bed, he collapsed to the floor in a heap of white sheets and attempted to scramble away on all fours, dragging the IV machine with him.

"Sherlock, please!"

John's voice cut through the chorus of angry beeps from the heart monitor and Sherlock wrenched himself to his feet.

" _Mind or matter, mind or matter…"_

Sherlock's lips were moving again, the words were spilling out and he tasted blood and—

"You're NOT REAL!"

John froze, his hand aloft. Sherlock held himself completely still, the heart monitor stuttering drunkenly into the silence between them. He counted 37 beeps before John took a tiny step forward. His eyes, lit from the side in stark fluorescence, found Sherlock's.

The detective lurched backward, his hands finding the smooth hospital wall. He realized he was shaking, in fact the wires drooping from his arms were rattling against the metal hook of the IV machine.

His voice shook, too, when it finally emerged after 26 more beeps had passed.

"You're not real, John. I know you're not."

John- _not the real John-_ didn't blink. He didn't take another step closer, but he didn't move away. Sherlock could not read anything on the man's normally expressive face. His eyes, his cheeks, his lips were perfectly still—

 _His lips. His lips… I—_

"I kissed you."

Sherlocked flinched at the sound of his own voice, but he was backed against the wall with nowhere to go and the thoughts were pouring back into his brain like the saline flooding his veins.

"I kissed you, it's not allowed, John, you're not real- the _real_ you has gone away, I ruined everything, you're only—"

Now John did take a step forward. His hand was still aloft; it hovered inches from Sherlock's chest. A tiny volume of air and a paper hospital gown were all that separated John's skin from his.

"You can't touch me, John, I know you're just in my _mind,_ I imagined you because the _real_ you is gone, you can't touch me—"

And John's hand collided with his chest.

It was a gentle touch, fingers landing lightly on paper and skin and bone, but it forced the breath from Sherlock's lungs. Suddenly he was body-less again, reduced to a single point of contact with the man standing only inches away in the newly-restored silence.

Sherlock watched in slow motion as John realized the implications of the abrupt quiet. His eyes were no longer unreadable, the specter of fear flickered into life as John looked towards the silent heart monitor. His eyebrows lifted, his lips parted, he was turning towards the solid line flickering across the screen and each movement seemed to take a century. Meanwhile Sherlock could feel all the blood he still possessed racing towards the point on his chest where John's fingers still brushed against his sternum, drawn inward by an unfathomable gravity.

Sherlock was passing the event horizon, it was infinite, this moment—

And then he collapsed around the singularity that was John's touch.

* * *

Somewhere in the distance a door was slamming. Footsteps echoed on the tiled hospital floor, the light patter of a woman's feet and the louder click of a man's stride. John stirred against the sharp edges of the plastic chair he had occupied for the last three hours, pulled up as close to Sherlock's bed as he could manage. The man hadn't stirred since he'd collapsed and been hauled back onto the blank white mattress by no less than five nurses. Apparently his attempt at escape had triggered an alarm in the nurse's station down the hall, and half the floor had come running.

Not that John minded. In his opinion, Sherlock deserved the attention of London's entire medical staff.

Twisting his stiff neck to glance towards the increasing racket emanating from the hall, John turned just in time to catch the door bursting open to admit a tall man in an impeccable suit along with the same gaggle of nurses that had occupied the room hours earlier.

"Mr. Holmes," one of them was saying, "You really can't be in here without a visitor's ID, you—"

She was cut off by a glance from Mycroft.

"I think this will be sufficient," he replied icily, brandishing some sort of government identification and leaving the nurses to glance at each other in trepidation.

In two long strides he had crossed the room to Sherlock's bedside, ignoring the bustle behind him as the nurses jostled back into the hall.

"I see this is becoming somewhat of a common occurrence, Doctor Watson."

Mycroft spoke without lifting his eyes from Sherlock's prone form.

John barely heard him. He was staring at the space by Mycroft's side, usually occupied by an umbrella but now conspicuously empty. The taller man looked… somehow deflated without his usual companion, and John had to wrench his gaze back up to Mycroft's face. He was met with a look of unfiltered disdain.

"I wasn't going to ask," John said coldly, knowing full well that Mycroft had probably deduced his exact thought process.

"And I wasn't going to tell you," Mycroft replied as he looked back towards his brother.

John sighed, beginning the explanation he knew the taller man expected.

"When I arrived they said he hadn't woken up since…"

John paused. He was suddenly unable to force the words past the barriers of his teeth and tongue. Aware of Mycroft's gaze on his tired face, he squared his shoulders and continued.

"He hadn't woken up yet, but he seemed to be having some kind of nightmare… He was moaning something and then he reached out and—"

Mycroft raised his eyes. "You can't possibly believe I didn't have this room on live surveillance the moment my dear brother entered its four walls? I know exactly what happened. In fact, it was already prepared when you—"

This time John cut him off.

"Yeah, about that."

He scowled, curling and uncurling his hands on his thighs.

"When we—when we made this plan and set up the cameras, you told me he'd be _safe_."

Mycroft's face remained as impassive as ever, and John stood to close at least some of the gap between his shadowed eyes and those of Sherlock's brother.

"My idea of safety does _not_ include him bleeding out in a hospital room while you're halfway across Britain doing God knows what."

Mycroft's eyebrows twitched.

"You always were rather protective," he said smoothly. "You are quite right to think that this entire situation could have proceeded with less discomfort for everyone involved."

John clenched his teeth. Why did Mycroft have to make everything sound so bloody _okay_? This was definitely not _okay_ , this was—

"It is my job to remain calm in situations such as this, Doctor Watson."

John glared, but Mycroft was clearly intent on continuing.

"I'd always known we'd need to set up a plan in preparation for the initiation of today's unfortunate events. However, I was—" here Mycroft assumed an especially distasteful expression- "—unaware that there would be chemical substances exasperating the urgency of implementing operation Lazarus2."

John gaped.

"You think this was because of—you think he was back on _drugs?_ "

Mycroft sneered down at him. "Come now, Doctor, surely you've noticed the absence of marks on my little brother's arms?"

John had, indeed, noticed this. He'd checked, as per his habit, while they had hurtled through the streets of London in an ambulance.

"I knew he wasn't on drugs," he said, attempting to match Mycroft's haughty tone but coming across rather shaken. "I was angry you would even _consider_ the idea that he had taken something, not after—"

Mycroft rolled his eyes.

"Yes, let's cut to the important part, shall we?"

John snapped his jaw shut.

"Sherlock was not on any drugs- or not on any _self-inflicted_ ones, anyway."

He looked down at John, _"Can't you deduce the answer?"_ written across his features.

John shook his head. "Look- I'm not in the mood for your games. We all know I'm the resident _idiot,_ so just drop it and tell me how Sherlock managed to get high enough to jump off a rooftop without actually injecting anything."

Mycroft sighed. He made a little motion as if to lean on his now-absent umbrella, a twitch John noticed with satisfaction.

"I'm not sure _high_ is quite the expression I'd use to describe Sherlock's mental state over the past week."

John sucked in a breath. "The past _week?_ He's been like this since—"

The realization sent John falling backward into his flimsy plastic chair.

"Since Sherrinford."

Mycroft said nothing as John's brain reeled, flashing red screens and train whistles and concrete walls and blood, _so much blood—_

Mycroft's hand on his shoulder pulled John back to reality with a crack of metal chair legs on tile. Since when had Mycroft… _touched_ people?

The hand was gone before John could say anything, but Mycroft's voice rang out again over the steady beep of the heart monitor.

"We can't have _you_ passing out on us now, Doctor Watson. I'm afraid my brother needs you too much for that, at the moment. Time to be soldiers again."

John would have strangled the man for his choice of words if he hadn't been consumed with rage for another person at the moment.

"What did she do to him? _What did she do to him, Mycroft?"_

John's voice had taken on the chilling tone it assumed when he was about to snap, about to pull the trigger or leap on someone from behind.

Mycroft looked away from the two men at his side for the first time. He fixed his eyes on the window, speaking to the sliver of grey sky visible through the curtains.

"I'm afraid we don't exactly know," he said, clearly annoyed at the prospect of not _knowing_ something.

"It's possible he was injected with a hallucinogen at some point during the events at Sherrinford. It's unlikely to have been something he inhaled, or you and I would have been equally affected."

John's hands had ceased moving at his sides. He was possessed by the merciless calm he had first discovered somewhere within himself in Afghanistan, the kind of cold adrenaline that seemed to course through his arm and meld his finger delicately with the trigger of a gun.

"Your sister- your _sister_ \- poisoned Sherlock so he would think he was hallucinating and try to commit… try to…"

Mycroft did not attempt to finish John's sentence. He was still turned away, but John could see the man's reflection in one of the screens at Sherlock's bedside.

"No," came the reply, barely audible over the ringing that started in John's ears as he caught a glimpse of the pain in Mycroft's eyes.

"Hallucinogen, yes- but attempted suicide, no."

Mycroft turned back to John, finally, and continued.

"She wouldn't have willingly induced Sherlock's death- you saw her reaction in Sherrinford."

John fought the tide of images that resurfaced from the dark place he had carefully stored them.

 _Sherlock with a gun, pointed at him- Mycroft's cold drawl sinking into his heart, the truth of those words eating at the tiny part of him that hoped maybe Sherlock would choose him. The gun swinging, wavering, pointing instead at Mycroft, hovering there for an instant and then turning, pointed upward into Sherlock's beautiful skull, his brain with so many beautiful thoughts—_

John pulled himself back to the hospital room this time. Mycroft's eyes were closed, and for a brief instant John allowed himself to feel the torrent of loneliness and guilt that washed so plainly over the man's face.

 _The British Government is falling…_ John heard some part of his mind say.

 _The umbrella, the hand on his shoulder, this rare flash of emotion… How much more can Mycroft take before even his practiced façade shatters under the weight of Sherlock's fragility?_

But the moment evaporated and Mycroft was staring back down at him, eyes carefully sharp again.

"In all likelihood, Sherlock _knew_ he'd been under the effects of some sort of drug. Most likely to enhance the effects of my sister's experiments…"

John winced, but he didn't look away.

"Unfortunately, it seems my brother didn't foresee that it would exasperate the part of him that was once prone to… self-destructive thoughts."

Mycroft coughed lightly, but resumed speaking almost immediately, "And he misinterpreted exactly which parts of his world he'd been hallucinating."

At this, the detective's brother cocked his head to one side.

"Have there been any _incidents—"_ he said delicately, "that might have convinced Sherlock something was different about you? Something… out of character?"

John rolled his head backwards, looking up at the ceiling with a groan.

"You really do have cameras bloody _everywhere,_ you absolute—"

"Cock?"

Neither John nor Mycroft were prepared for the voice that coughed into life behind them.

"You've used that one before," said Sherlock weakly.

"Pick a new one… I do get tired of hearing the same old insults while I lie dying in a hospital bed."


	5. Chapter 5

A/N:  
Dear readers- I apologize for the long wait! I've been on a road trip, but the final chapter is here! Thanks for following along with Sherlock and John on this crazy ride :)

* * *

 _Red_.

 _So much red. Scarlet and crimson and carmine washing over him, licking at his skin with a feverish urgency, vibrant against moon-pale flesh._

 _Sherlock tilted his chin back, gasping for breath as the tide of vermillion crawled with hot fingers towards his lips. He was submerged, surrounded by the thick red liquid and he sucked in one last lungful of air before he was pulled under into the wine-colored heat._

 _After a moment of panic he found that he could see through the red that pressed into his eyes. He could hear, too- his ears were filled with a gentle, rhythmic thumping that seemed to pulse through his entire body. He gave an experimental kick of his legs and bobbed gently upward, but he was too far from the surface now to be carried back into the air._

 _Besides- he didn't want to go back. He was here for a reason- yes, a reason, but what was it?_

 _THINK!_

 _Sherlock shook his head, squinting at the strange sensation of his curls drifting through the wet warmth that enveloped him. Why was he here? He clenched his lips tighter, fighting the urge to inhale. He needed to concentrate, focus, detach from the strings of physical need dragging his brain into submission. But it was so hard, impossible when his lungs were collapsing and the oxygen had gone from his veins and—_

 _Veins. Yes, that seemed right._

 _Something clicked in that special place in Sherlock's chest. The one that felt always unhinged, two halves of a mysterious whole that moved into alignment only when he had gotten something just right. Veins, yes, but further- blood! That was his purpose here. He was looking for something, here in this maze of hemoglobin and plasma, something important. He needed to hurry now, if he was going to find it. He only had a few moments more before his oxygen-starved brain started playing tricks on him…_

Hallucinations _. Yes, brain tricks, those tiny malfunctions that could send a man spiraling into the very darkness he had fought so hard to shed. And lack of oxygen was not the only thing that could trigger these insidious machinations, no- Sherlock knew that better than most. But this time there had been no needle, no syringe pressed to the blue swell of his vein. There had to be something else here, hiding in his blood and infiltrating the pristine halls of his brain._

 _But what was it, and who had put it there, and why had it made him imagine—_

"Wake up!"

 _Why had it made him stand on the edge of a rooftop and-_

"Sherlock, you're scaring me!"

 _It had made him turn to look back at somebody who was not real, no, just a hallucination—_

"Sherlock!"

The detective jumped.

Not from a rooftop, no- he jumped in his chair, flinching away from the blurry shape that hovered before him. He blinked, squinting against the sudden brightness until the shape solidified into a short, compact figure in a maroon jumper.

 _John._

"What the _hell_ are you doing?"

John did not sound very happy. In fact, he sounded rather like he was inclined to strangle Sherlock. His arms remained firmly crossed, however, and he glared down at Sherlock with his best "I'm worried but I'm going to pretend I'm angry" expression.

John had lots of these expressions, Sherlock had noticed. The doctor was very skilled at making his face say exactly the opposite of what he really felt, which was how Sherlock knew John was more likely to phone an ambulance than strangle him at the moment.

Sherlock closed his eyes again, slowly, and then opened them when the last of the silver spots had danced away from the edges of his vision. He cleared his throat to offer a perfectly rational explanation for his behavior, but John beat him to it, apparently satisfied that Sherlock was alive enough to be chastised for whatever it was he had just done wrong.

"You've been home from hospital for exactly six hours and you're doing an _experiment_?"

Sherlock said nothing. He knew John would continue until he was done expressing his charmingly furious opinion, so it was no use launching into an explanation while there was still breath in the doctor's lungs.

"You've just lost half the blood in your body, suffered massive trauma to your skull, and been informed that you were poisoned to the point of delusion and you think it is a smart idea to sit here in front of your microscope and—"

John trailed off as his gaze caught on the instrument sitting in front of Sherlock on the kitchen table. The detective watched understanding, then frustration, then resignation paint themselves across the canvas of his friend's face until John closed his eyes. He sucked in a breath and held it for a minute as though he would somehow open them again to find a perfectly healthy Sherlock sitting at the table, doing something normal instead of examining his own blood for traces of unidentified hallucinogens.

Apparently this irrational hope disappeared when his eyes flickered open again to find Sherlock seated peacefully in the milky white glow of the microscope. John started to turn away with a little half-shake of his head, but then seemed to think better of it and squared his shoulders again in Sherlock's direction.

"Look," he said, voice taught and face strained, "I understand that you feel you need to _solve_ this- you want to know what your sister did to you. But could you have waited, could you—"

He glared at Sherlock as the detective opened his mouth to speak.

"No- you just sit there and listen to what I have to say, for once. Because this is going too far, Sherlock, I can't keep watching you…"

John looked up at the ceiling, speaking to the space above Sherlock's head.

"You stopped _breathing,_ for God's sake!"

John's voice broke just a little and he stopped, taking a shaky breath. This time Sherlock took advantage of the break; it was disturbing to watch John's anxiety seep through the cracks in his military-grade armor, so he filled the silence with his own voice.

"Well that's to be expected, isn't it? When one falls four stories?"

Now John did turn away, hiding his expression from Sherlock's eyes. The detective hated when he couldn't see John's face; it was like losing the subtitles on a foreign film. When the irritating imprecision of language failed to convey the doctor's feelings, his eyes always told the truth. But now Sherlock was forced to read the tension in John's shoulders instead as the man leaned his forehead against the faded wallpaper.

"Not then- yes, then too, but _now—"_

John's voice was muffled. It took Sherlock a full second- much longer than normal- to latch on to John's intended meaning, by which time the doctor had already begun explaining himself.

"Yes, you stopped breathing then, when you fell—"

He broke off for a minute, turning again to face Sherlock.

"But I mean now, just now- you stopped breathing. I thought you were—"

"Not dead," interrupted Sherlock, sensing that John's sanity was rather dependent on not being allowed to finish the sentence.

"Not dead, just in my mind-palace."

John looked down at him, his face shattering into a thousand fragments of emotion.

"Four times, Sherlock. Four times in the past _week_ you almost—"

It was Sherlock's turn to look away. He let his eyes settle on the microscope again, feeling his pupils dilate in response to the harsh white glow. A reflex, his brain adjusting ocular muscles to save him the pain of looking into such brightness. Automatic, just like the tightening in his chest, the hitched breath he stumbled through as his ears registered the agony in John's voice. It was Sherlock's body trying to protect him again, but this was a light from which he did not want to be sheltered. He did not want to hide from John's incandescence- not when _he_ was the cause of the pain radiating from the man's body.

 _This is my fault. And this is why I_ need _to know what she did to me._

John's face was slowly arranging itself into the vaguely detached expression Sherlock recognized as the first warning of withdrawal.

 _No, no please stay- don't leave, I didn't mean to hurt you again—_

Sherlock finished his thought aloud.

"I promise I'll never do it again."

His voice was calm, nonchalant even, but his hands trembled on the edge of the table.

John laughed, the way he did when there were no words to express what he really wanted to say. But he tried anyway, stringing together the syllables like a necklace of broken beads.

"You'll never do what again? Run off, black out on the rug, jump off a building, stop breathing in the kitchen? You'll never make me think I've lost—"

John clenched his fists, driving the rest of his sentence into the raw wound in Sherlock's chest.

"You'll never make me think I've lost you?"

Sherlock was quite certain he had been impaled. He realized suddenly that it was possible for words to be more painful than a collision with concrete, and only managed to keep breathing because he knew John would become even more distraught if he failed to do so.

Despite Sherlock's efforts, his breathing remained erratic. He felt his mind begin to scroll through possible responses to his present situation, but there was no protocol for providing emotional comfort. All his programmed reactions felt suddenly inadequate, fake, the empty motions of a robot who had been hastily taught the rules of human interaction.

So instead, Sherlock opened his mouth and willed John to hear the paragraphs swirling behind his three quiet words.

* * *

"I'm sorry, John."

Sherlock's voice hung between them like something alive. Delicate, almost translucent in the light of the microscope, the sound took forever to reach John's ears. He felt it in his chest first: the ripple of air from a butterfly's wings, swelling into a hurricane of unspoken words.

 _I'm sorry John. I'm sorry that I've hurt you, and I'm sorry that I can't promise I'll never hurt you again. It's just who I am, and you're the only one who's ever understood._

John let Sherlock's final, silent plea reverberate in his empty lungs.

 _Please don't leave me._

John waited for the dizziness to pass, settling into the silence that followed. Before him, eyes contorted like a wounded animal, Sherlock waited for his condemnation. Sometimes John was shocked by the detective's resemblance to something wild, untamed. If intelligence was the measure of humanity, Sherlock was as far from animalistic as any man could be. Yet in moments like this, he moved with the raw grace of a beast not quite socialized, not quite domesticated… at once dangerous and beautiful and now poised to flee like a great cat confronting an uncertain threat. There was something vulnerable in his eyes, a yearning to be touched, and yet it was shadowed by the constant fear of rejection.

John was seized by the instinct to reach out and let Sherlock feel the solid weight of his hand, to comfort the detective with the certainty of his presence.

But then he remembered the last time he had tried to reassure Sherlock with a touch- the wild flare of his eyes, the deafening silence where his heartbeat had been- now was not the time to try that again.

So he tried instead to do with his voice what he could not do with his hands.

"Sherlock. Look at me."

The detective raised his head, face turned upward as though simultaneously basking in the warmth of John's gaze and fearing that it would burn him.

"Sherlock- I'm not going anywhere. This is me- _real, alive-_ and I'm not going to leave you."

John was not sure if it was his breath or Sherlock's that was coming in ragged gasps now.

"I'll never be able to _truly_ understand why you do what you do, but I know that…"

John fought the urge to turn away. He needed Sherlock to hear this, no matter how the words tore at his throat on their way out.

"I know you didn't mean to do it- to jump."

Sherlock flinched, a horrible instinctual shudder that made John doubt the stability of his own knees.

"It was your sister- she made you think I wasn't real, she made you think it was a good idea…"

Sherlock closed his eyes, and when he spoke it was in a whisper that John barely caught over the hum of the refrigerator.

"I'd never leave you, John."

Upon further analysis, John was quite sure his knees were no longer up to the task of supporting his body. He drew up a chair and collapsed onto the hard wooden seat, letting his head fall forward onto his hands.

"That's why I have to know, John—" Sherlock spoke again, louder this time— "That's why I have to know what she did to me. So I can be entirely certain that it never happens again."

He gestured at the microscope, at the slide with its tiny drop of blood and poison and all that it represented.

John sighed. "I know you'd never do it if you weren't- if you hadn't been- _altered_ , like that. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt to watch you try—"

He swallowed the rest of his words and waited for the rising tears to recede. Through the blur of saltwater he watched Sherlock sit motionless across from him, his narrow chest rising and falling too rapidly.

All of a sudden John was struck by an echo of the words Sherlock had spoken not long ago in this same room- his last words to John before he had disappeared to chase a sinister vision on the rooftop of Bart's.

" _You didn't tell me you weren't real."_

John let the implications of the sentence wash over him, waiting for their full weight to register as he'd not had time to do on their first utterance.

"Sherlock?"

John considered the risk of continuing this particular inquiry, but decided that it would only grow more dangerous if allowed to fester.

"Sherlock, this isn't the _first_ time you've… imagined me."

He paused, waiting for a reaction, but continued when there was none.

"It happened before- when you were gone."

This time Sherlock shivered, trembling as though caught in a raging fever. He opened his mouth to speak, avoiding John's gaze.

"Yes," he said simply, folding in on himself in the wooden chair.

"Yes. When I was… away."

John nodded, deciding it was better to let Sherlock unravel the story at his own pace. Eventually the detective continued.

"At first it was just… your voice."

He looked at John now, his eyelids sliding closed as if listening to a ghost-John whispering from the distant past.

"One day I saw you. You were watching- you looked sad. I tried to follow you but…"

Sherlock opened his eyes, two spots of turquoise fixed on John's face. The doctor let himself be examined, let Sherlock drink in the reality of his existence in the physical plane.

"It was just that- your voice, an image- for a while."

Sherlock didn't look away, but his expression had changed. Fear had been abandoned for the unbridled honesty of a man facing death- or rather, the far more painful punishment of being left alone with his mind.

"One night you came closer."

Sherlock did not blink, and neither did John.

"You let me touch you."

There was something in the plain, unaltered admission that shaped itself into a question. A request, a hand hanging in the air above John's chest. The doctor reached out and pulled Sherlock's fingers towards him until they rested on the same spot he had foolishly touched the detective.

This time Sherlock did not flinch. The sensation of his hand on John's jumper seemed to draw him forward, eyes bright with a desperate hunger.

"You showed me your scar."

John was aware that his hand was moving, his body twisting as he pulled aside his jumper. But he could not follow the motion with his eyes- they were locked on Sherlock's face, captivated by the words written in the sharp plane of his cheeks, the slant of his eyes, the curve of his lips:

 _I want to know you- all of you. Your strengths and your weaknesses, your victories and your scars._

John gave a silent answer in the tilt of his body, leaning into Sherlock's hand. The detective's eyes narrowed a fraction, as though his sense of touch was the only thing that could be trusted in this fragile moment. His fingers traced the lines etched into John's skin, trailing over his flesh with the reverence of an artist admiring a masterpiece.

John realized Sherlock had left his chair, moving noiselessly to kneel in the space between John's knees. His dark curls were so close, resting like lines of ink on the on the smooth marble of his flesh.

Only it was not flawless, not anymore. The crimson streak that stretched across Sherlock's temple- the mark of his most recent rooftop dance with death- drew John's gaze like a bloodstain on bleached paper. The glaring evidence of Sherlock's humanity, of the fragility he tried so hard to hide, snapped the final unbroken pillar of John's resolve and he leaned forward. The planets had surely swung round in their orbits by the time John's lips met Sherlock's brow; the celestial spheres had come into alignment, tugging with invisible strings to bring these two bodies together in the kitchen of 221B Baker Street.

Sherlock shivered. It was not the cold trembling of fear, not this time. Instead the man's tension seemed to evaporate in a ripple of sinew and bone. John registered the weightless press of Sherlock's gaze on his cheek. He lowered his eyes to meet the detective's and found one final question there; or rather, a statement hanging in those alien yet achingly human eyes.

 _You let me kiss you._

John wasn't certain if the words were spoken, or if they had diffused through the junction of Sherlock's skin and his own. But his response was not so ambiguous, spoken aloud into the space that separated the two men.

"No Sherlock. That was real."

John felt the air rush past him as Sherlock inhaled sharply.

"That was real, _I am real_ —"

The space was narrowing, millimeters now, and John was whispering against Sherlock's lips.

"This is real, too."

And then there was no space at all between them- only the sudden convergence of souls with the force of a supernova, two worlds resolving in a flare of colors too brilliant for the Earth's ordinary palette.

Through the halo of cosmic radiation John felt Sherlock's hand tighten on his shoulder. Where their lips met burst forth the last rays of a fading sorrow, the anguish of a dying star, and Sherlock trembled in John's arms as the aftershock tore through his body.

There would be emptiness still to cross, dust and debris and the suffocating heat of nascent galaxies blinking into life. They would never pass through this universe without being scarred by each other's light, scorched by each other's pain.

But they could survive together in the glow of their steadfast hearts, shield one another from the worst of their searing coronas. This John knew, as he let himself be carried on a stellar wind into Sherlock's embrace.

They would shelter each other from the storm of their existence.


End file.
